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More action needed to tackle disability hate crime

26 July 2012

Sometimes, a news story leaves you feeling sick to the pit of
your stomach; the murder of Gemma Hayter is one such instance. The
27-year-old was beaten, tortured and humiliated before being left
to die. The case has caused outrage nationwide - rightly so - and
it again shows how devastating disability hate crime can be. Gemma
Hayter is not the first person to die as a result of disability
hate crime. In recent years, there have been several high profile
cases involving people with learning disabilities; Fiona Pilkington
and her daughter Francecca Hardwick, David Askew and Steven Hoskin
to name but four. While they are extreme examples of hate crime,
they all escalated from lower-level abuse, such as name-calling and
bullying, that wasn't dealt with effectively. It is this sort of
abuse that blights the lives of many people with learning
disabilities on a daily basis. On the same day as Gemma Hayter's
murderers were convicted, the Equality and Human Rights Commission
(EHRC) released a report stating that people with learning
disabilities see harassment and abuse as an inevitable part of life. Worryingly, it
seems to be on the rise; new figures show that disability hate
crimes rose by more than a fifth in 2010. Across England, Wales and
Northern Ireland, police recorded 1,569 incidents in which the
victim thought the alleged crime was motivated by their disability,
compared with just 1,294 in 2009. However, many hate crimes still
go unrecorded, either because they aren't reported to the police,
or are classified as something else, such as anti-social behaviour.
So the real figure could be a lot higher. But there are initiatives
out there to try and address this. For example, numerous local
authorities have recently launched schemes that give people with
learning disabilities cards which have contact numbers where they
can report hate crime. Elsewhere, Mencap's
high-profile 'Stand by me' campaign has also engaged many police
forces across the country, with the aim of improving the police's
awareness of, and response to, disability hate crime. Engaging
with, and changing the attitudes of, policemen and women is crucial
- the EHRC report says that all too often those who commit hate
crimes against people with disabilities get away with it. If people
knew there were effective punishments, it would deter them from
doing it. But perhaps more than anything we require a societal
change to tackle disability hate crime, and the casual harassment
and abuse that underpins it. We need to be ready to challenge
people who act in this way and give a strong message that it is
unacceptable in any form. Prejudice of all sorts towards disabled
people should be as socially unacceptable as homophobia, racism and
sexism. And hate crime needs to be seen as a crime just like - and
in some senses more serious - than any other. There also needs to
be a change in the public's perception of people with learning
disabilities; the EHRC report says a more positive attitude towards
disabled people needs to be engendered right across society. We
need to flag up the positive contribution that people with
disabilities make to society, and get away from the talk of
'burden' - on benefits or families - which implies that they are
worth less than other people. They aren't and this needs to be put
across in the mainstream media. It will require a lot of time and
work, but this needs to be taken on, if cases like Gemma Hayter's
are to be prevented in the future.